


Son et Lumiere

by kincaidian



Category: Cloud Atlas (2012), Cloud Atlas - All Media Types, Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
Genre: M/M, Rebirth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-13
Updated: 2013-03-13
Packaged: 2017-12-05 04:22:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/718834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kincaidian/pseuds/kincaidian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the heart of London, nestled snugly between a confectionary and a church, there is a secondhand bookshop that’s due to close at seven on weekends, but rarely does. The shop’s due to close at seven; at six forty-five, a dark-eyed, slender-wristed boy with Latin inscribed on his forearm in Magic Marker comes in.</p>
<p>An exploration of Frobisher's assertion, 'I believe there is a another world waiting for us, Sixsmith. A better world. And I'll be waiting for you there.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Son et Lumiere

In the heart of London, nestled snugly between a confectionery and a church, there is a secondhand bookshop that’s due to close at seven on weekends, but never does.

Over the door that gets gently stuck on rainy evenings hangs a plaque reading ‘Frobisher & Sixsmith: Booksellers’ that has, over time, become an old joke among the employees. The owner of the shop is an elusive Londoner by the name of Clare, inherited from his grandmother; no one actually knows who Frobisher and Sixsmith are.

The shop’s due to close at seven; at six forty-five, a dark-eyed, slender-wristed boy with Latin inscribed on his forearm in Magic Marker comes in and stands in the threshold, smiling hopefully at the cashier until the latter, with a sigh, sets aside his textbooks (too new to be from the shop – covering the unlikely topic of Experimental Physics, and the boy makes endless fun of him for that) and turns his attention to him.  The boy carries a fragrance of cinnamon and chocolate in with him; the stacks of books seem to lean closer around him, enthralled.

“Any news from our bookselling friends?” The boy will ask. His eyes will be sparkling relentlessly, inviting the cashier to share the inside joke.

The cashier will shake his head, but his lips will twitch, betraying him. “It’s a secondhand bookshop, you know. We don’t get new material weekly, no matter what illusions you have of a world just waiting to fling books out of their way.”

“Ah, but a book once read has no use other than to spread wisdom,” the boy accompanies the statement with an expansive gesture, his hands moving like freed birds. The cashier catches a glimpse of what it says on his forearm: _Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum europe vincendarum_. Same as last week, same as the week before.  The cashier smiles helplessly.

The boy catches him staring, and smirks. The cashier huffs out a breath and looks away.

“It will be positively ghastly when you are to leave for Cambridge again,” the boy says, flinging himself onto a chair opposite the cashier’s. He taps the spine of the textbook on the table. “I have half a mind to pack myself into one of your suitcases and come with you.”

The cashier smiles a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. The boy, still fiddling with the textbook, doesn’t seem to notice. “You manage quite well without me, I’ve heard.”

The boy looks up, sharp, assessing. His eyes have a mercurial quality, yet retaining a somberness unfitting for someone his age.  On some days, when his forearm reads of terrible things, things that don’t bear thinking: _Sunt Lacrimae rerum_ , reads the boy’s pale skin on the bad days. _Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit._

The cashier bites his lip, and reaches out to cup the boy’s cheek. Not much younger than he; already the bane of his parents’ existence, laughing and joyful and reckless, and yet, he seems to carry the weight of all the sadness in the world on his fragile shoulders.

The boy turns into the touch, eyes alight, practically purring. “What,” he says, quiet, a spark of an unnamed fire burning bright in his eyes, “would I do without you, and your books?”

The cashier has a premonition then; a vision, spectacular and dazzling in its clarity, fireworks and gunshots and music hanging in the air, translucent, waiting to be plucked out by long, skilled fingers.

The cashier thinks of fireflies; he thinks of all things beautiful and eternal; he thinks of how fifty years from now, he will look at this boy (grown up: he sees the boy as a boy no longer, grown and respectable and not quite so reprehensible anymore; yet, that spark in his eyes brighter than ever.) and be aware that he is _happy_.

He kisses the boy.

The world doesn’t tilt; it refuses to shift. It remains the same, even as the boy’s dry lips (tasting of cinnamon) move under his own, kiss back, smile against his.

The boy’s fingers curl in his lapels, and the cashier thinks, _luceat lux vestra._ He imagines inking the words over the translucent skin over the boy’s veins, and smiles back, not breaking the kiss.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies for the French title, at odds with the Latin. Further apologies to Theravada Buddhists, because I pretty much mangled centuries of theoretical foundations here.


End file.
